


Ghost of the Past

by rhysiana



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: (No actual character death), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Hitchhiking Ghosts - Freeform, M/M, Mentioned Kate Argent, Post-Hale Fire (Teen Wolf)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-15 21:29:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21259934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhysiana/pseuds/rhysiana
Summary: “Please,” Peter said, shivering, “you have to help me. I have to warn them. There’s going to be a fire.”Quickly Chris shrugged out of his coat and draped it over Peter’s shoulders. There was no recognition in Peter’s eyes. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll get you there.” He remembered the way to the Hale house even after all these years, and pushed the car to go a little faster, edging to the limits of what felt safe in the fog.He felt some of his tension loosen as he made the turn onto the Hales’ long drive through the Preserve. “Almost there,” he assured Peter as he steered carefully through the unusually deep ruts that seemed to have formed in the gravel road recently.There was no answer.He glanced over and then slammed on the brakes in shock, skidding a little. Peter was gone. All that remained in the passenger seat was Chris’s coat.





	Ghost of the Past

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, I know I said in the tags that there is no actual character death in the fic, and that's sort of true, in that Gerard and Kate both die before the start of the fic. In case that's a thing anyone needs a warning for. And Sheriff Stilinski is referred to as "Deputy" throughout instead because he wasn't sheriff yet at the time of the fire.
> 
> Also, does this fic contain accurate portrayals of burn treatment timelines and actual hospital protocol? Absolutely not. Is it in line with the way Beacon Hills Memorial seemed to operate in canon? Yes. Just roll with it. If you're a hospital professional, I'm so sorry.
> 
> This was going to be a short little not-actually-a-ghost-story thing, and then cobrilee cursed me by saying, "I dunno, that premise sounds like it could easily be 10k to me." Well, it is *not* 10k. But it is a lot longer than originally intended, so, you know, enjoy. Originally written for the Petopher Discord Halloween 2019 challenge.

Chris had never expected to come back to Beacon Hills again, let alone to pick up his sister’s body. Victoria had not been pleased when he got the call, but with Gerard dead just the previous month of a cancer he’d tried to hide from all of them, there really wasn’t anyone else. And Chris had always done whatever was necessary for his family, after all.

“What were you even doing here, Kate?” he muttered out loud, hands tightening on the steering wheel to the point of pain. He peered at the road ahead, headlights barely making a dent in the encroaching fog, and sighed. He really hoped the universe would cut him a break after this.

Just as he passed the _Welcome to Beacon Hills_ sign, his headlights caught on a figure frantically waving from the side of the road, as if they’d just stumbled out of the woods. There were no broken down cars pulled over into the shoulder to offer any other explanation. Chris stopped to investigate, the hair on the back of his neck rising.

He grabbed the gun he kept in the driver’s side map compartment and stuck in the holster in the small of his back as he got out of the car. “Are you all right?” he called.

“Please, help me,” the man gasped.

Chris stopped short when he got to the other side of the car. “Peter?” It had been nearly fifteen years since they’d last seen each other, but he was sure he’d recognize Peter Hale anywhere.

The same did not seem to hold for Peter. He looked at Chris with no recognition in his eyes, just frantic desperation. “Please, I need to warn my family, but I’ll never get there in time.”

Chris blinked in surprise, never having heard Peter ask for help before. Not for anything. But he took in the way Peter was standing at the edge of the forest, shivering and rubbing his arms (although Chris had never actually known him to get cold), and decided whatever was going on, it must really be an emergency. He shrugged out of his coat and put it over Peter’s shoulders before gesturing him toward the car. “Come on, I’ll drive you.”

Peter nodded as he settled tensely in the passenger seat. “Thank you. I have to warn them.”

Chris wasted no time restarting the car and pulling back onto the road into town. “So you said. Can you tell me what’s going on?”

“Fire,” Peter said succinctly, and shivered again under Chris’s coat. “There’s going to be a fire. At the house. Everyone is there. I have to warn them.”

“I’ll get you there, don’t worry.” Chris edged his speed higher, pushing at the limits of what felt safe in the fog. He still remembered the way to the Hale house, and Peter was freaked out enough to affect Chris. He’d never seen Peter display such obvious emotion.

He felt some of his tension loosen as he made the turn onto the Hales’ long drive through the Preserve. “Almost there,” he assured Peter as he steered carefully through the unusually deep ruts that seemed to have formed in the gravel road recently.

There was no answer.

He glanced over and then slammed on the brakes in shock, skidding a little. Peter was gone. All that remained in the passenger seat was Chris’s coat. He reached out to touch it and found it cold.

“Shit,” he hissed.

Slowly, he eased the car forward around the last bend of the driveway, dreading what he would find. Nothing could have prepared him for the charred ruins that greeted him.

“Oh, Peter, no…” he breathed.

* * *

Feeling numb, he made his way into town and checked into his hotel. He’d thought having to deal with Kate’s body was going to be difficult enough, which was why he’d told Victoria he’d do it alone; if he’d thought about Peter at all when making the trip back to Beacon Hills, it had been the vague idea he might run into him at a coffee shop downtown. Not trapped in a loop as a hitchhiking ghost still trying to warn his family about a house fire. It was too horrifying to contemplate. He couldn’t leave Peter like that.

He fell asleep making a new checklist in his mind of everything he’d need to get to try to exorcise his spirit before he left.

The next morning, he allowed himself just enough time to grab coffee before he made his way to the sheriff’s station.

“Chris Argent here to see Deputy Stilinski,” he told the woman at the front desk. Tara, her nametag said. Not the person he had spoken to on the phone.

“Sure, just a sec,” she said, looking over her shoulder into the bullpen. “John,” she called, “there’s a Chris Argent here for you.”

The sandy-haired man rose from his desk and came up to the front to open the gate for Chris. “Mr. Argent. Thanks for coming in. I know it was a bit of a drive for you.”

“The deputy I spoke to on the phone wasn’t very clear about what happened.”

Deputy Stilinski cleared his throat as he reseated himself at his desk, gesturing to the visitor’s chair for Chris. “Yes, well…”

“Was there an accident? I’m assuming not, since it seems like a routine traffic accident would have been easy enough to relay over the phone.”

“Mr. Argent, if I may I ask, when is the last time you saw your sister?”

Chris frowned, trying to think. “Maybe… six months ago? We aren’t—weren’t in the same area anymore, so we didn’t see each other that often.”

Stilinski nodded, then looked at his notes. “And she didn’t seem odd to you then? Nothing out of the ordinary?”

Chris restrained a snort. “I don’t remember noticing anything out of character, no.”

Stilinski looked down at his papers again, tamping the stack together and straightening the edges nervously before visibly steeling his spine. “Well. It appears shortly after you saw her, she moved here under an assumed name, took a job as a substitute teacher at the high school, seduced an underage student to gain access to his house, and then burned it down with the whole family trapped inside. She was found at the scene and drew a weapon on the officers responding to the 911 call.”

All the blood seemed to leave Chris’s extremities at once, leaving him with tingling fingers and a light head, but he held stock still in his chair, as he’d been trained. He swallowed, made sure his breathing was steady, and asked, “Which family?”

The deputy shot him a sharp glance, likely for responding to that part of the story rather than the fact Kate had been shot in the commission of a horrific crime. “The Hales.”

“I see.” Not that he really needed the confirmation.

“Did you know them?”

“I did. We lived here when I was in high school, and I knew Peter Hale then, but I wasn’t aware Kate knew any of them. She was much younger.”

“Do you have any idea why she would fixate on them? Decide to kill them?”

She shouldn’t have. Everyone knew the Hale pack was old, well respected, stable. That was why the Argents had left Beacon Hills in the first place. No reason to be here.

But Chris could hardly say any of that, so he just shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. I guess I didn’t know my sister as well as I thought I did.”

Deputy Stilinski didn’t look like he bought that, but he didn’t press. “Well, if we think of anymore questions, we know how to reach you.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Let me get you all the forms for the release of her body. It’s being held at the hospital morgue until you could make arrangements.”

Chris nodded, not sure that “thank you” was really the appropriate sentiment here.

“I must say, Mr. Argent, you’re taking the news about your sister being shot resisting arrest very calmly.”

Chris narrowed his eyes, then raised his chin slightly and looked the deputy straight in the eye. “If I’d come across my sister doing what you say she did, I’d have shot her myself.”

Stilinski looked a little taken aback by his vehemence, but nodded like he understood before busying himself gathering paperwork.

Chris really couldn’t imagine how things had come to this. That Kate would break laws with impunity was no surprise, but that she’d go against the Code so thoroughly, and use such reprehensible means to do it… He would have said it was unthinkable, but clearly he would have been wrong. Had she known Gerard was dying? Had it driven her to bizarre extremes? He rarely regretted distancing himself from the rest of his family, but maybe he could have prevented this if he’d been keeping a closer eye on them. Then again, he’d learned a long time ago the only person responsible for Gerard’s actions was Gerard, and therefore he had to extend that same logic to Kate. For his own sanity, if nothing else.

News of this would spread through the hunting community, that was for sure. That it hadn’t already was a little shocking, but the involvement of a minor might have kept the department a little more tight-lipped than usual. He made a grim little private bet with himself that Victoria would have divorce papers drawn up by the time he got home; this would definitely be enough to tarnish the Argent name beyond what she was willing to put up with.

He shook himself firmly back into the present when Stilinski handed him an envelope full of forms.

“This should be everything you need.”

“Thank you.” Chris started to rise, then paused. “I’m sorry, can you tell me, were there any survivors?”

Stilinski’s lips thinned. “Three. Two of the older teens, who were at a school function, and Peter Hale, your old acquaintance.”

Chris couldn’t prevent his startled reaction. “Peter’s _alive_?”

The deputy winced. “Well, he’s not dead. He was very badly burned, though. He’s still in a coma at the hospital.”

The envelope of papers crinkled as his grip tightened. “A coma.”

Of course _now_ Stilinski would look at him with a compassion Chris almost couldn’t stand. “I don’t think he’s expected to survive,” he said gently. “The burns are too extensive.”

Chris swallowed to clear his throat again. “Thank you for telling me,” he said faintly. This time when he rose, he actually left.

* * *

Chris was very good at compartmentalization. There were things that had to be done, so he did them. He went to the hospital. He made all the necessary arrangements to have Kate cremated. They told him he wouldn’t be able to pick up the remains until the next afternoon, and he said that was fine. Everyone was very quiet, very calm, very professional. Including him.

But when it was all taken care of, he found himself hesitating in front of the elevators. He doubted an Argent would be welcome in Peter’s room, but he couldn’t stop thinking about his spirit being trapped in an unending loop. Obviously Chris wouldn’t be exorcising him now, but clearly something needed to be done to bring him peace. A werewolf shouldn’t be in a coma in the first place. If he’d become unmoored, that might explain it. Chris had to try.

He hit the up button, and when the elevator came, he resolutely chose the third floor for the burn unit rather than the lobby.

The nurse on duty accepted his explanation of being “an old friend” with sympathy and directed him to Peter’s room with pity in her eyes. He was shocked to find Peter’s room otherwise empty. Where were the other two remaining members of his pack? Stilinski had said they were just teenagers, but surely they would want to be here. Were they being kept away? Had they been _sent_ away? Where was their emissary, that there was no one here at the hospital running the necessary interference to get proper care for werewolf physiology? There was so much wrong with this situation Chris didn’t even know where to start.

Most of the burns seemed to be confined to one side of Peter’s body, leaving one arm completely free of bandages. Tentatively, Chris reached out and took Peter’s hand.

“Hey. I’m sorry I was gone for so long.”

The machines beeped in the silence of the room. Peter lay on the bed, unnaturally still. It couldn’t be clearer that he wasn’t really there.

Chris lay Peter’s hand gently back on top of the smooth hospital covers, completely undisturbed since the last time the nursing staff had changed them.

“I’ll bring you back, don’t worry.”

* * *

Operating on the assumption that Peter really was stuck repeating the same actions night after night, Chris drove back to the edge of town and pulled off to the side of the road by the woods to wait. He’d just turned the car back on to run the heater again when fog suddenly rose up where none had been before and Peter stumbled out of the woods.

“Please, help me,” he gasped.

Chris was out of the car in a flash, already yanking off his coat and putting it around Peter’s shoulders to anchor him in a more solid form, if only temporarily.

“Peter,” he exclaimed, trying to break the script as quickly as he could, “I’m so glad I found you!”

“I have to—you are?” It was too much to hope for that Peter would actually recognize him, but at least this was progress.

“Yes, there’s an emergency. I need to take you to the hospital immediately.”

“An emergency? Is it one of the kids? Is it Derek?”

The intensity of that last question told Chris everything he needed to know about which of Peter’s nephews Kate had seduced, and he ached for the tiny toddler he had known so briefly years ago.

“It’s not Derek,” he said as soothingly as possible.

Peter became agitated again and Chris noted they were passing the turnoff for the Hale house. “You don’t understand, there’s going to be a fire. I have to warn them!”

“You were right, there was a fire. Someone was badly burned. That’s why I have to take you to the hospital. So you can save them.”

“I was too late,” Peter whispered, and Chris’s hand shot out to close around his wrist in the hopes the contact would prevent him from disappearing.

“No, Peter, listen. Yes, the fire happened, but your pack needs you now. At the hospital.”

“The hospital.”

“Yes, to save the person who was injured.”

The wrist in Chris’s grasp didn’t lose any of its rigid tension, but it also stayed there, so Chris was calling it a win.

He pushed his car’s speed as high as he felt he could get away with, all the way to the hospital’s parking lot.

He took Peter in through a side entrance, not that he really expected any of the staff to recognize the unburned version of him, but there was always the possibility of running into someone who had known Peter in regular life before the fire. He half expected Peter to try to go to the emergency room, but then, this wasn’t really Peter. This was his spirit, essentially his ghost, and as soon as they stepped inside the building, Chris noticed that he automatically oriented to where his body was. Chris chose to take it as a sign that Peter’s two halves were likely to merge when he brought them together, mostly because he really didn’t have a clue what to do if that didn't happen. He could stay, though; he’d stay as long as it took to figure this out.

The night nurse was thankfully distracted when they stepped off the elevator, and Peter’s room was fairly close to the entrance to the ward, so they were able to get in without notice. At some point in the journey, Chris had taken hold of Peter’s wrist again, so he felt Peter’s jolt of recognition.

“That’s me,” he said. “I’m the one that was burned in the fire.”

“Yes,” Chris confirmed softly.

Peter looked over at him and finally recognition dawned. “Chris? What’s happening?”

“Your body’s in a coma, but your spirit appears to be wandering. I picked you up last night beside the road, trying to warn your family about the fire.”

“I was too late,” Peter whispered again.

“I’m… I’m not actually sure you knew ahead of time,” Chris said tentatively. “I think, well, I think maybe you’re trapped in your own mind right now while your body tries to heal, desperately trying to make things right.”

Peter looked down at himself, taking in all the gauze and puckered, reddened skin. “I must be in so much pain.”

“You can’t feel it?”

Peter shook his head. “I don’t want to. But this isn’t right. I shouldn’t be in a coma. I shouldn’t be in the hospital! I’m a werewolf. This is wrong.”

“I know. Do you think it’s because you became… unmoored like this?”

Peter cocked his head to the side, a glimmer of the Peter Chris remembered showing through. “Maybe? But I think there must be something keeping me split. Astral projection in times of extreme need isn’t unheard of in werewolves, but it shouldn’t be prolonged like this. How long have I been here?”

“Several days, at least.”

Peter frowned, took a breath Chris wasn’t sure he technically needed in his current form, and reached out to touch his own hand.

Nothing happened.

“Shit,” Chris muttered.

Peter just looked like a theory had been confirmed and turned slowly in place to take in the whole room. “Nothing in the windows, nothing in the corners…” he muttered. “Untuck the bedding.”

“What?”

“I need you to look for hex bags or charms under the bedding. Look under the pillows, too. I’m going to see if I can find anything underneath.”

Peter suited words to actions and dropped down to wriggle under the bed, and Chris snapped himself out of his surprise to do his assigned part. Under Peter’s pillow, he found a small pouch that seemed both slimy and not when he picked it up. He couldn’t imagine how it had managed to stay there through what must have been multiple bedding changes by now, and it gave him a very uneasy feeling about leaving Peter alone here.

Peter whacked him on the ankle from under the bed. “Get down here!”

“I found one,” Chris said as he crouched down.

“Wonderful, so did I. And I can’t touch it,” Peter said irritably, and pointed at another hex bag stuffed into a crevice at the foot of the bed.

Chris wasn’t sure if both hexes needed to be in place to work, or if the one under the bed was just there as a redundancy, but he grabbed them both, walked into the room’s attached bathroom, and flushed them down the toilet. Burning them probably would have been safer as far as dispersing the magic permanently, but he didn’t want to chance the smoke detectors. Nor, he supposed, the chance of retraumatizing Peter, insensible as he seemed at the moment.

“Well?” he said as he returned to the room.

Peter looked at him in exasperation. “I figured you’d want to actually _see_ if it worked.” He reached for his body’s hand again, and then paused, eyes flicking back up to meet Chris’s again. “In case I don’t get a chance to say it, it was good to see you again. Circumstances notwithstanding.”

And then he touched his hand and was gone, Chris’s coat falling to the floor where he had been standing.

He had just enough time to grab it before all the monitors in the room started going nuts and Peter arched up off the bed in agony.

A nurse came skidding into the room, glaring when she saw Chris. “What did you _do_?” she demanded.

“Nothing!” he insisted, holding his hands up in innocence.

“Visiting hours are over. You shouldn’t be in here.” A doctor and several more nurses poured into the room, and Chris melted back into a corner, hoping he wouldn’t be noticed in the confusion.

“What happened?” snapped the doctor.

“I don’t know,” said the first nurse. “He was in here, and…”

Well, there went Chris’s hopes to be overlooked. “I was just talking to him.” That was even mostly true.

“Get him out of here.”

Seeing how the situation was likely to devolve any minute, Chris chose a tactical retreat to the waiting room and started scrolling through the contacts in his phone. Who was close by who could come pose as a specialist in Peter’s “rare family medical condition”? More importantly, who would actually answer if Chris called, given recent events? Crossing his fingers that he’d done enough to distance himself from Kate in the eyes of those who mattered, he dialed.

* * *

A day later, a statuesque Latina woman swept into the room, where Chris had installed himself as an immovable fixture, much to the staff’s annoyance. The attending physician was making his usual frustrated check on Peter, not understanding any of the readouts he was getting and doing his best to manage Peter’s obvious pain within what science told him were safe limits. (Chris knew it wasn’t doing any good, and was doing what he could by holding on to Peter’s good hand in the absence of actual pack to offer comfort.)

“Hello, I’m Dr. Elena Calavera. I’m so sorry for my delay in getting here.”

The other doctor blinked at her. “Uh…”

“Thank you for coming,” Chris said.

She inclined her head gracefully and turned back to the doctor. “I should have been called earlier, of course, but I understand everyone who had an understanding of the family’s genetic disorder perished in the fire, yes?”

“Oh, he has a disorder?” the man asked, with what sounded like relief.

“Yes, it is very rare. I am one of the only specialists in this area of the world. I had to catch a flight from Mexico, hence my delay. If I may?” She indicated the chart, and he handed it over gratefully.

“I’m sure you have more rounds to get to,” she said in clear dismissal. “I’ll find you when I’m done here to see about transferring his care.”

He scurried out, door closing behind him, and she rounded on Chris. “Where is his pack?”

Chris gave a one-sided shrug. “I haven’t managed to find them yet. There were only two left, kids, and they seem to have disappeared. I’d be out tracking them down myself right now, but…”

Elena looked at their linked hands and snorted. “Well, I suppose you’re better than nothing. You say he was wandering as a ghost before this?”

He nodded. “A hex of some kind.”

“Did you save one?”

“Getting him back in his body seemed more important.”

“Short-sighted,” she sniffed. “Now we have no way of knowing whose magic it was.”

“Unless they try again,” he pointed out, not unreasonably, he felt.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “You want to leave him in here that long?”

Peter’s hand spasmed in Chris’s, indicating his opinion of that idea.

“No,” Chris said, “definitely not. Are you going to give him something to speed his healing now?”

“No, not yet.” She turned to her bag, drew out a vial and a syringe, and efficiently drew up and gave Peter a shot of whatever it was. Peter’s eyes snapped open and he gasped. “Peter!” she snapped. “I need you awake now! Are you listening?”

She took his whine of pain as an affirmative.

“You must hold off your healing as much as you can until we can get you out. Can you do that?”

“Have… been…” he wheezed, which was more than Chris had expected him to be able to do.

“Good,” she said briskly, and drew up another shot. “This is for the pain. Hopefully by the time you wake up again, we will have you out of here.”

Peter closed his eyes again in relief, and the death grip he’d had on Chris’s hand for the past day finally relaxed a fraction.

Depositing the syringe in the sharps container by the door, Elena then packed everything back in her bag and speared Chris with another uncomfortably observant look. “If you want him to heal as quickly as possible when we get him out of here, you find those kids. He’ll need his alpha, or we’ll all wish he’d stayed in that coma.”

Exhausted, he nodded. It wasn’t like he didn’t know. But he’d been awake for nearly two days, and that wasn't as easy to do in his mid-thirties as it used to be. Now that Peter had slipped into a more natural sleep, though, whatever had been keeping Chris on constant alert finally relaxed enough that he could give in to pillowing his head on his arms at the edge of Peter’s bed and catch a little rest for himself.

When he woke a bare hour later, his mind felt a great deal clearer and he wanted to kick himself. He grabbed his phone and dialed the sheriff’s station. “Peter’s awake,” he said as soon as Stilinski answered, and then continued right over the other man’s shocked reaction, “so I need you to either tell me where the other survivors are or get them back here yourself. I had to call in a specialist who knows about their family’s medical condition, and she needs to check the kids over too.” Calling Elena was turning out to be even more useful than he’d initially thought. Nothing cleared bureaucratic red tape like the invocation of a medical specialist.

“They were pretty dead set on leaving town,” Stilinski said, “but I’ll do what I can. They said they were going to have him transferred when they got settled, but of course we all thought they had a lot more time.”

Chris made a few vague noises of agreement before hanging up, just as Elena blew back into the room.

“Tomorrow. I’ve got some of the boys coming with transport. You have a place?”

God bless efficient women. “I have a hotel room.”

Elena looked over at Peter doubtfully. “He’ll probably get loud. Holding off the healing for this long is just going to make it hit him that much harder later.”

Chris considered what he remembered of Beacon Hills. “There used to be a mostly abandoned warehouse district, back when we were in high school. I don’t know if they’ve knocked them down for redevelopment or not, but…”

“I’ll have the boys check.” She frowned at him. “I supposed it’s too much to hope that you’ll actually leave to go sleep in your hotel?”

He grimaced at the thought.

She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Fine. Then at least move to the reclining chair and I will get you a blanket. You will be no use otherwise.”

He gave in because she was right, and fell asleep clutching his phone in case Stilinski called with any news about locating Peter’s pack.

* * *

Deputy Stilinski, as it turned out, opted to just bring the kids straight to the hospital rather than call, which was understandable but slightly annoying; Chris would have appreciated a little bit of warning.

The girl—the young woman, really—stopped short in the doorway, eyes narrowing, and demanded, “Who are you? What are you doing with our uncle?”

“My name is Chris,” he said, treading carefully, “and I was friends with your uncle in high school.”

She didn’t bare her teeth at him, but it was a near thing. Her brother hovered warily behind her, leaving no question as to which of them had inherited the Alpha spark.

“Well, you can leave now.”

Chris had a sudden vision of Allison’s future teenage years, and bit back a smile. This was a very serious situation, after all. “I’m afraid I can’t. I’m the one coordinating with the medical specialist on Peter’s behalf.”

“You’re _what_?!” she asked in outrage, the panic she was just barely covering starting to break through. Chris fought down the instinct to hug her.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay,” he said soothingly, hands out. “I know you’re doing your best. You weren’t trying to leave him behind, you were just trying to find somewhere safe to take him, yeah?”

Her hands clenched into fists, and the boy, _Derek, he must be Derek_, put a hand on her shoulder. She nodded tightly.

“Can you tell me your names? I haven’t been in Beacon Hills for a long time, so I’ve lost track of all the younger Hales.”

“Laura,” she said grudgingly, “and Derek.”

Chris gave them a small smile. “The last time I saw you both, you were probably too small to remember.”

“You met us?” Derek whispered.

Chris gestured them both further into the room. “I did. You must have been around two at the time. Why don’t you go sit next to your uncle? It’ll do him good to have you nearby.”

Laura shot him a suspicious glance and he just nodded. Honestly, he didn’t know how much less subtle he could be with these two, if they hadn’t picked up on the fact he knew about werewolves from the first mention of the “medical specialist.”

He left them holding Peter’s hand and went into the hall to talk to the deputy.

“Thank you for bringing them,” he said.

Stilinski nodded. “Where’s this doctor you said they needed to see?”

“Arranging Peter’s transfer. Hold on, I’ll text her and try to get her up here as fast as possible. They plan to move him this afternoon, and I know there’s a lot of paperwork to fill out.”

Stilinski nodded again and fidgeted with the hat in his hands, looking deeply uncomfortable.

“Don’t like hospitals?” Chris asked, hoping to put the man a little more at ease.

His plan backfired. The deputy’s whole expression tightened. “My wife just died,” he said stiffly. “Here.”

Chris sucked in a breath in sympathy. “I’m so sorry. Look, do you need to do anything to turn them over into my custody or something? Are there papers? I don’t want to keep you here.”

“No, Laura’s old enough to serve as Derek’s guardian. She was quite adamant about it.” He visibly shook off the effects of being in the hospital and straightened up to look Chris in the eye. “You better believe if anything happens to them, I’m coming after you.”

“I would expect nothing less. But I swear I’m going to do everything in my power to keep them safe. All of them.”

With one last hard look, Stilinski put his hat back on and left.

* * *

Things progressed quickly after that. Elena’s briskness and surety seemed to put Laura and Derek at ease, as did the smoothness of Peter’s transfer. It reminded Chris of how very young they still where. He wasn’t sure he’d ever been that trusting of the adults in his life, especially strange ones, no matter how officially they presented themselves. He doubted Peter would let that continue, once he was fully recovered, and pitied them all over again.

Elena’s men had indeed found an empty warehouse to serve as Peter’s makeshift recovery ward, though hopefully they wouldn’t be there long. They wheeled the gurney over to a corner under some industrial stand lights.

“You, Laura, stand here and take his hand. You will need to be ready to lend your strength as his alpha,” Elena ordered, and Laura moved without thought.

“Derek, you will stand at his shoulders, in case he needs to be held down.” She gave them both a stern look, and from what Chris remembered of Peter’s sister, he thought they probably found it familiar. “This will not be easy. You need to prepare yourselves.”

“We can do it,” Derek said, with more determination than Chris had heard him express all day.

“Very well. We will begin.” Elena gave Peter another shot of something out of her bag, and within seconds he was arching up off the bed again.

Pain rolled off him in nearly tangible waves, and his howl, when it finally broke free, sounded like it was being ripped from the very depths of his being.

The kids held on doggedly, Laura’s eyes blazing red, tears tracking down Derek’s cheeks even as he set his jaw grimly and tried to keep Peter from twisting off the gurney. Chris wanted to look away, but forced himself to witness it all, a reminder of what Kate had done. He owed the Hales this much.

What seemed like an eternity later, Peter finally collapsed again, chest heaving. Carefully, Elena peeled away all the bandages, revealing skin that was still covered in scars and angrily red, but definitively whole.

“Uncle Peter?” Derek said, stroking Peter’s face gently.

Peter turned into it and Derek relaxed slightly. “Thank you,” Peter rasped, and tightened the hand still holding Laura’s. “Let me just… rest for a moment and then we’ll go.”

“Go where?” Derek asked.

Laura took a breath to answer, but Chris cut her off. “My hotel room. This isn’t quite done yet.”

“They told us Kate was dead!” Derek insisted, tensing all over.

Both Peter and Laura reached out to touch him, to only minimal effect.

“She is,” Chris said firmly. “I viewed the body and sent it for cremation myself.”

Derek tried to back away, held in place only by his sister’s grip. “Why? Who were you to her?”

Chris sighed. At least Peter was on the way to fully healing now, even if this all went south. “Her brother.”

Laura moved in front of Derek, eyes blazing.

“What she did was wrong. So very wrong. We have a code—”

A growl cut him off, and he nodded at the interruption.

“Not everyone follows the Code as well as they should. If I’d known how far gone Kate was, I would have stopped her, I swear.”

Elena stepped up next to him. “Kate and Gerard kept their fanaticism well hidden amongst those of us who follow the Code strictly, but their conspirators will be rooted out now. This _will not_ happen again. Tribunal has called for a purge of the ranks.”

Chris looked at her in surprise. “Since when?”

She gave him a half-smile. “Since yesterday. I have no been idle since I arrived, nor have my brothers.”

Relief washed through him, sudden and shocking. He _knew_, had always known, that his father’s fanatical hatred of anything supernatural was wrong, a twisted view of the hunter philosophy, but a part of him had still been sure other hunters agreed with it. This felt like the first true confirmation from the community he’d grown up in that he was on the side of right.

Peter pushed himself upright, pulling Derek closer to have someone to lean against. “Do you want help?” he asked with a gleam in his eyes.

Elena laughed. “No, but thank you for the offer. We police our own…” She paused for a long look at the Hales. “Though clearly we need to be better at it.” She clapped her hands once to banish the subject and returned to the matter at hand. “No, what Chris was speaking of was the witch.”

“Witch?” Laura asked, eyes darting between them as she tried not to look completely overwhelmed.

“The witch who was keeping me out of my body,” Peter said, sounding stronger by the minute.

“I don’t understand,” Laura said. “Why is this happening to our family?”

Peter pulled her in and kissed her on the forehead, somehow managing to look collected and sure while sitting mostly naked on a stolen hospital gurney.

“Why don’t we move this to my hotel?” Chris suggested gently.

They managed to scrounge Peter a mismatched collection of clothes from various cars, which Peter clearly tolerated only because there was no alternative, and then the Calaveras left for their own base of operations.

The Hales, unsurprisingly, piled onto the other bed in the room, still feeling the need to touch Peter as much as possible. Chris considered the room service menu for a minute, but then thought better of it given the amount of food Peter was likely to need to fuel his recovery. Not to mention the two other still-growing werewolves.

“Going out for food,” he told them. “Back soon.”

The kids barely acknowledged his departure, but he saw Peter raise a tired hand in thanks. He returned in under thirty minutes with a truly absurd number of hamburgers and a Target bag full of clothes for Peter.

“The mighty hunter,” Peter managed with a smirk between bites, and it was the most himself Chris had heard him since this whole thing had started. A little more of the tension in his chest eased.

Once all the hamburgers had been demolished, the kids fell into an exhausted sleep. Watching Peter smooth their hair back, Chris suspected it might be the first time they’d really allowed themselves to sleep since their house burned down. Peter, on the other hand, showed no interest, despite how exhausted he must be.

“I’ve spent enough time asleep lately,” he said in answer to Chris’s unspoken question, and stepped out onto the tiny balcony.

Chris followed. “Are you all right? After… everything.”

Peter didn’t answer, tipping his face up to the moon instead and closing his eyes, letting its light wash over him. “Thank you,” he said eventually. “For breaking me out of the cycle. I… remember it. The feeling of futility. The endless desperation, night after night. The fire is just bits and pieces, mostly managing to find my emergency sat phone and dial 911 before the smoke became too much, but… Why is being a ghost clearer than reality, do you think? It would help if I could remember the witch. They must work at the hospital, to have been able to keep the hexes in place. A nurse, probably.”

Chris longed to reach out and touch him, but wasn’t sure it would be welcome anymore. Peter shivered again, still burning through most of his resources to heal, and Chris reached back through the door to snag his coat off the back of a chair. “I can start checking into new employees tomorrow,” he said as he set the coat over Peter’s shoulders, the action starting to feel familiar in its repetition.

This time Peter shrugged his arms fully into the sleeves and pulled the collar more firmly around his neck, giving Chris as small smile as he inhaled, bringing back some interesting high school memories, but then he froze.

“What?” Chris asked, instantly on alert.

“I can smell her,” Peter said. “Her magic. She’s in the Preserve.” He checked the moon again and swore. “I’m pretty sure I even know where.”

He darted back into the room, shaking Laura and Derek awake. “We have to go. Come on. We know where the witch is.”

“Should… should we call Elena?” Laura asked uncertainly.

“I have everything we need in my car,” Chris assured her, and just like that they all seemed to remember he was a hunter too. Derek shied away from him, but Chris ignored the reaction. _This_ was the reason hunters existed.

The piled into Chris’s SUV, and he followed Peter’s directions deep into the Preserve. Eventually they ran out of road, but Peter assured them their destination wasn’t much farther. They paused just long enough for Chris to arm himself and then set off through the trees.

Chris really didn’t know what he was expecting, but Alan Deaton tied to a giant stump in the middle of a clearing while an otherwise harmless red-haired woman stood over him with a ceremonial knife really wasn’t it.

“Well,” he said, drawing his gun smoothly as Peter flowed over to the other side of the clearing, claws out, “I guess this answers my questions about why your pack’s emissary wasn’t at the hospital with you.”

The witch didn’t even glance at Chris. “You!” she spat at Peter. “How did you even wake up?” She sprang at him, knife raised, and Chris shot her mid-leap.

“Really, Christopher?” Peter asked with a raised brow, rolling the witch over to make sure she was really dead. The kids ran forward between them to cut Deaton loose.

Chris shrugged and reholstered his gun. “Sounded like a confession of guilt to me.”

“We could have questioned her, found out what she wanted me for.”

“Does it matter?”

“I suppose not.”

Deaton coughed pointedly as he sat up, rubbing his wrists. “I hate to break up your little tête-à-tête, but I believe I can answer all your questions.”

Peter frowned. “She wanted the Nemeton, I assume.”

“Astute as ever,” Deaton said, spreading his hands to indicate the stump he was sitting on, and Peter rolled his eyes. “She intended to make three sacrifices over the course of the three nights around the full moon. Me, a druid, tonight. You, a werewolf, tomorrow, at its height. I’m not sure who she intended for the third night, but she apparently believed it would harness all the Nemeton’s power to her personal use.”

Peter stared at him in disbelief. “That’s insane. It’s the nexus point of multiple ley lines! It would have burned her out within seconds.”

Deaton smiled beatifically as Laura helped him stand. “I did try to tell her.”

Chris nudged the witch’s leg with his toe. “I suppose I should see about body disposal now,” he said with distaste.

“No need,” Deaton said. “Just give her to the tree.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“It is balance,” he said, unperturbed, and Chris wondered irritably if all emissaries were this cryptic, but he and Derek obediently hauled her up onto the stump.

They all stood in silence as vines crawled out of the previously dead-looking tree to cover the body. When they retreated, nothing remained.

“Well, that was creepy,” Chris said, speaking for them all if the looks on Derek and Laura’s faces were anything to go by.

“If I could catch a ride back to the clinic, it would be much appreciated,” Deaton said, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, jolting them all back into reality.

“Sure,” Chris said, and led them all back to the car.

* * *

When Chris finally woke up the next day, it was to Laura asking, “But where will we live?”

“Please don’t make us stay here,” Derek begged. “I can’t.”

“Shh, shh, I know,” Peter said, and Chris cracked his eyes open to see Peter, already looking less scarred than the night before, pull Derek into a hug. “It’s okay. I agree that a change would do us all good. We’ll all go to New York with Laura.”

Laura jolted. “What—?”

“You think I don’t know you were accepted to Columbia?”

“But…”

Peter looked at her seriously, rare shades of his sister in his expression. “Your life will not stop because of this. Yes, we lost our pack. But we survived, and we will continue to live. Do you hear me? We will not become shadows of ourselves. We will mourn, and we will _live_.”

He stared both children down until they nodded. “Good.” And then he sent them into the bathroom to brush their teeth and get ready to leave.

“You can get up now,” he told Chris.

“I knew you could tell I was awake.” He rolled out of bed and started rifling his suitcase for clean clothes. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Peter shook his head. “You’ve already done enough. I’m sure you have a life to get back to.”

Chris straightened up, clean shirt dangling from his hand. “I have to pick up Kate’s ashes today. I was supposed to get them yesterday.”

“I’m sorry.”

Chris shot a startled look at Peter. “Why are _you_ sorry?”

“Remember, I knew you when you were younger. She was your annoying kid sister, once. I’m sorry she wasn’t who you wanted her to be.”

Chris grimaced. “Yeah, well.” He yanked the new shirt over his head and started shoving everything else back in the suitcase.

Peter passed him his coat, which had been dropped by the side of the Hales’ bed the night before.

Chris looked at it, considering, and then stepped forward to drape it around Peter again. “Keep it. I hear New York is cold this time of year.”

Peter pulled him in by his belt loops. “You could come keep me warm, you know,” he murmured.

Chris sucked in a breath of want at the thought. It had been so long. “I have some things I need to take care of first. But I’ll come find you.”

Peter pulled his head down into a kiss, long and deep and full of promise, and patted him on the cheek when he was done. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

Chris didn’t know exactly what his immediate future would hold when he got home, but for the first time in a long time, he found he had something to look forward to.

**Author's Note:**

> In case you were wondering (you weren't), my vague background idea was Kate knew Gerard was dying and was stalking the Hales with the intention of capturing a weakened alpha to bite him after she killed the majority of the pack, but when she heard he died before she could bring the plan to fruition, she decided to kill them all anyway out of spite.
> 
> I am on [tumblr](https://rhysiana.tumblr.com/).


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